Alright, so who had “second week of April” in the betting pool?
Although…….a buddy of mine said he’d buy the blued one from me, so I think that would not count as a gun purchase for me for April since I dont get to keep it. It would just be a gun bought for resale.
Once thought of as a fringe mind-set, the prepared citizen movement is gaining traction in a world shaped by war, the pandemic and extreme weather.
Ten men, some wearing camouflage, others in vests loaded with ammunition for their AR-15 rifles, gathered under the morning shade of oak trees in Central Florida last month. They were there to learn marksmanship tactics common among Special Operation forces and elite law enforcement units.Their instructor, Christopher Eric Roscher, an Air Force veteran, introduced himself and then led the group in prayer.“Lord, you would use them as assets, to be protectors in this world, in a world that’s full of evil,” he prayed.The men gathered around him were not soldiers, police officers or right-wing militia members. They were mostly civilians, including two pilots, a nurse and a construction company executive. The class’s title — Full Contender Minuteman — even referred to the civilians turned soldiers of the American Revolution.
In a world shaped by war, a pandemic and extreme weather, more Americans are getting ready for crisis — whether it’s to fight a tyrannical government, repel an invading army or respond to a natural disaster.They are known as prepared or professional citizens, part of a growing number of gun owners who are adapting their mind-set to uncertain and polarized times. And rather than being part of more fringe “prepper” culture, they are growing more mainstream, catered to by companies ready to offer them the tools and training to be ready.
I mentioned a few posts back that I had put together an entirely ODG (olive drab green) AR. I like the color, it goes well with everything, and, honestly, black rifles get a little boring. On the other hand, finding accessories in basic black is a piece of cake. Finding accessories in ODG, however…that takes some work. Well, thats not really true…what it takes is money. But, Zero wanted an all-green gun and, dangit, thats what Zero got.
Sling – MagPul M4 Sling
VFG – Magpul VFG
Rails – Timber Creek aluminum rail segments in ODG
Sights – Magpul BUIS in ODG
I’m a bit disappointed that the QD socket attachments were only available in black, but you can’t have everything. I’ll be swapping out the muzzle device for some sort of QD-supressor-compatible device as soon as I figure out whats available. And, the glaringly obvious glaring barrel might just be left as is..or it might get the rattle can treatment…we shall see.
And since TPIWWP:
I don’t even want to think about the market bloodbath that is going on these last few days. If there’s any bright spot, it would be that now is the opportunity to buy since everything is ‘on sale’.
However…….
I’m hedging my bets. I normally throw my weekly dividends back into more equities. No longer. I’ll be pulling a large chunk of those dividends out each week and dumping them into physical silver and gold. Why? Well, mostly because silver and gold dont throw 5-10% losses every day for several successive days…at least not lately.
Oh, I’ll still keep buying the equities, but at least half of that money is going into silver and gold.
Well, quieter, anyway.
You guys remember last month when I missed out on an auction for a fixed-sight, full underlug, 4″ GP-100? Yeah, that was a bit of a heartbreaker. But, I’m soothing my feelings with this:
It’s from 1995 but is in very nice condition. For those who aren’t familiar with this piece, some background may be in order. Fixed sight variants of the GP-100 are a bit hard to find. Most of them were made for police/security contracts, including a .38 Spl DAO version for the NYPD. They were available in a couple variations – stainless or blued, full or half underlug. Ruger catalogs a 3″ variant these days in stainless, but the 4″ don’t show up much. Century Arms re-imported some stainless half-lug DAO versions a while back and they turn up on GunBroker, but I’d prefer to have the option of single action as well as double action.
Anyway, this gun is gonna get some cleaning and then its time to head to the range and see how it shoots.
A friend of mine sent me this link. Do with it what you and an electric igniter will.
A while back, one of my vendors was closing out KE Arms complete polymer AR lowers. These things are the successor to the old(er) Cavalry Arms poly lowers that were available years back. I wound up going pretty deep on these things and have about 20 of them sitting here. If you shop carefully, you can wind up putting together a deliciously light carbine. My vendor was selling two different flavors – the basic black with mil-spec parts, and a OD green model with razoo trigger, ambi mag release, and a couple other nice features. I picked up two or three of those. Here’s the problem – I hate mismatched colors on guns. I fully understand that two-tone guns can look quite striking and cool…but when it comes to AR’s (or carbines in general) I really would prefer them to be one color or pattern. A green upper receiver on a black lower just seems so….kitchen-table-assembly ghetto. Yeah, its a snob thing. Sure, I could have just pulled an AR off the rack and had it sent to the guys at Blue Line with instructions to green it up, but I figured if I waited long enough I might find one.
Turns out that when it comes to getting a factory-produced OD upper made by a major manufacturer…its a stretch. Do a hunt for a colored AR AR of color and you’ll see that most outfits just color the furniture. Want a green AR? No sweat…everyone sells an AR with some OD Magpul furniture….stock, handguards, pistol grip…..but the actual lower and upper are still black. Not what Zero wants. Before you start commenting about how so-and-so runs off lowers in various colors, please not that Im not saying they arent out there. Im simply saying its not an easy thing to come across assembled uppers in ODG. (Aero, for example, puts out colored uppers but there are not assembled.)
However, patience pays off sometimes. I found a ‘take off’ complete OD upper made by SIG on GunBroker. I put a bid in on it and won. So…time to ‘assemble’ another AR.
Still working on re-organizng,re-arranging, and re-evaluating the mountain of things I have in storage. Its a slow and laborious project but it needs to get done. Its also sort of a de facto way of inspecting pretty much everything I have.
Im kinda tired at the end of the workday, so Im not terribly likely to spend my weekday evenings doing this sort of thing, so that leaves just weekends. Thing is, weekends are when I have to do all the things I’ve been blowing off all week. So…weekends wind up being dang busy.
As I’m moving stuff around and re-arranging, I’m also finding things that are probably ready for retirement and replacement. For example, packets of batteries from ten years ago, bottled water from five years ago, things like that.
Its a pain in the ass, doing all of this, but I’m getting some satisfaction about my levels of preparedness in various departments. I’m also keeping an eye towards the quantities I have so I can determine what is and is not ready to be halved and shuttled when I finally get the Chunk O’ Nowhere in my portfolio.
Hows that coming, by the way? Slow. I am learning very quickly that western Montana is expensive, and eastern Montana is, comparatively, quite cheap. There are places in eastern Montana where I can get 160 acres for the same amount of money 20 acres costs me here. Problem is, eastern Montana is pretty flat, featureless, and open. I’m looking for something with a bit more features than what is essentially a grassy parking lot. But…I’m in no tremendous hurry. I’d really like to get the ball rolling on this in this year, but the longer I wait the more money I have to put towards the purchase, which translates into more options. But…I also dont want to wait so long that when I finally get what I want I’m too old to enjoy it and play with it. So, like everything else in life, the trick is timing.
In the meanwhile, though, I’m still working on getting what I already have more organized and ready. But, boy, when it’s time to split all this up and move half to the Beta Site it’s gonna be quite the adventure.
So I’m still working on this months-long project of straightening things up and organizing better in the area where I store all my stuff. One of the things I have is racks of wire shelving where I keep my stash of canned goods. Although there’s plenty of different manufacturers of various can organizers, I usually wind up going back to the Shelf Reliance Cansolidator organizers. They are rather expensive for what they are, but, I have to admit, theyre quite durable and their modularity allowing them to be used to make long runs of cans is pretty sweet. But…dang theyre expensive. Yes, I could make my own with some 1×4’s and plywood but the Shelf Reliance versions allow me to reconfigure them endlessly as my needs change.
In addition to having to pick up a couple more of the Shelf Reliance uits, I also need to pick up a few more of the plastic black-n-yellow storage bins. CostCo has been selling the 27 gallon ones, and I have a stack of them, but it turns out CostCo is also selling the smaller 12 gallon ones as well, and theyre handy for stuff that you don’t have huge quantities of or are too heavy to fill a 27 gallon tote with.
And, in a final surrender to turning into a middle-aged man, I bought…a label maker.
Also, I discovered that the folks at repackbox.com no longer sell the cardboard box packaging kit for the long-term #10 cans of food storage. So, I need to head over to the LDS cannery some weekend and pick up some of the 6-can cardboard boxes.
Its a long process, but a deeply overdue one, doing this bit of reorganizing but its quite necessary. At some point I’m going to get that stupid land purchase crossed off my list and I’ll need to transport half this stuff there. It’ll be nice to have it organized enough that its a simple matter to just grab all those plastic totes and ammo cans and go.
Gotta say, though, I’d rather spend my weekends out at the range or something but when society descends into (further) chaos I’ll probably be glad I traded weekends at the range for getting my supplies and gear sorted out.
